Toby Harnden was the Daily Telegraph's US Editor, based in Washington DC, from 2006 to 2011. Click here for Toby's website. Follow him on Twitter here @tobyharnden and on Facebook here. He is the author of the bestselling book Dead Men Risen: The Welsh Guards and the Defining Story Britain's War in Afghanistan.

The truth about Barack Obama's Irish teleprompter "gaffe"

Dozens of readers emailed me to ask why I hadn't include the teleprompter mix-up at last week's St Patrick Day event in my top 10 gaffes by Barack Obama and Joe Biden when the president supposedly thanked himself for hosting the event because the wrong speech was loaded onto the machine.

Well, it seemed a bit fishy to me and there was no video. And upon further investigation – Obamaphobes and dittoheads brace yourselves for a big disappointment – I can confirm that there was no gaffe by the president.

This is what happened.

Mr Obama hosted an evening reception for the visiting Irish premier Brian Cowen and other Emerald Isle and Irish-American dignitaries in the State Dining Room of the White House. First up, Vice President Joe Biden. Then, President Obama. So far, so unremarkable. Read a transcript of their comments here.

Then it got a bit murky and open to misinterpretation because Cowen's speech was not transcribed by the White House or Federal News Service and the event was covered by a "print only" pool – meaning there were no media cameras present.

The most authoritative account I can find was from pool reporter William Englund of National Journal. His pool report stated:

"Then it was Cowen's turn, and he was in for a surprise. 'We begin by welcoming today a strong friend of the United States,' he said–then stopped in surprise as he realized he was reading President Obama's speech off the teleprompter. 'Why don't these things work for me?' he asked, as the crowd roared. 'Thank you for having us. Who said these things were idiot-proof?' Then he got his bearings and gave the same talk that he delivered in the East Room. When he ended, at 8:12, Obama stepped to the microphone and said, 'First, I'd like to say thank you to President Obama…(much laughter). Happy Saint Patrick's Day, everybody.' Then we were escorted out."

That was pretty clear: there was a teleprompter mix up and the fall guy was Cowen. Obama stepped in after Cowen's five-minute speech to make a good-natured and well-received joke at the Irish premier's expense.

Ironically, therefore, Obama was ad-libbing rather than mindlessly reading the wrong speech from a teleprompter.

I've exchanged emails with Englund and he confirmed this was the case and kindly supplied me with an audio file of the event that removes all doubt.

In the recording, Cowen begins speaking by ad libbing, saying: "Good evening everybody and welcome to St Patrick's Day at the White House. And I think it's particularly fitting that we gather tonight at the house that was, after all, designed and built by an Irish architect."

Then he goes into Obama's speech, and realises his boob 18 words into it: "We have had a wonderful day that began by meeting with a strong friend of the United States…that's your speech."

After Cowen got his act together – amid uproarious laughter – and completed his speech, Obama returned to the microphone for his little joke, as per the pool report.

Somehow, somewhere this all got mixed up, inadvertently or otherwise. The Associated Press reported it this way. Accurate enough – though very sparse and including the slightly ambiguous line: "In doing so, President Obama thanked President Obama for inviting everyone over."

This was transformed into Obama making a mistake, as in this account, in the Times, written in London by an online reporter for their website. "On this occasion, as a laughing Mr Obama returned to the podium, the script was belatedly switched over to the Taoiseach's text – leaving Mr Obama inadvertently thanking himself for inviting everyone, to further laughter," went the report. "'First, I'd like to say thank you to President Obama!' the President said."

This misreporting fed into the prevailing anti-Obama theme that he cannot speak without a teleprompter.

Here's the hay that Rush Limbaugh gleefully made with the botched version of the story:

It's rubbish, of course, to argue that Obama cannot speak without a teleprompter. On the campaign trail, Obama often spoke off the cuff and did so remarkably well. Anyone denying that is not living in the real world and his political opponents are deluding themselves if they think he is not a good – at times, superb – speaker.

He had off days on the campaign trail but on top form he was a campaigner without rival. I remember him at the height of his campaigning powers at an event in Alexandria, Virginia last February. Here's a sample of what I saw (note he is not using a teleprompter):

Which isn't to say that Obama doesn't have a teleprompter "issue". That's now been well established by Politico and the Washington Post. Relatively late in the campaign – around the time of his "lipstick on a pig" slip – he began to use a teleprompter all the time. Since then, it seems to have become a bit of a crutch.

I'm surprised, by the way, that the White House isn't rebutting misleading stories such as the St Patrick's Day one. Once a perception gets embedded into the public consciousness it's difficult to erase it – whether it's accurate or not.